Hydraulics (Open Channel)

Closed Conduit Hydraulics

Fig. 1: Water flowing over a weir

This section is mainly used to solve for fluids in an open channel, compared to Closed Conduit Hydraulics (e.g. pipes, etc) which is for closed systems. Uniform flow in open channels is often calculated using the Chezy formula and it's derivate, the Manning formula.

Definitions:

normal depth: the only one uniform depth for a discharge in a given channel with a given slope

critical depth: the depth at which for a certain flow, the specific energy is a minimum

open channel flow: the flow of water as a free surface by gravity (not pressure)

uniform flow: flow in which the depth and velocity doesn't change along a channel